


Lifeguard on Duty

by ShivaVixen



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, Blue Paladin is Paladin of Water, Gen, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Lance being a lifeguard, No Beta we die with spelling errors, headcanons and OCs for flavor, not quite accurate lifeguard rules, set vaguely in seasons 1-3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-20
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-29 00:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30147717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShivaVixen/pseuds/ShivaVixen
Summary: A 5 + 1 with Lance being a lifeguard and vague author head canons and OCs for flavor.
Relationships: Allura & Coran & Hunk & Keith & Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt & Shiro, Lance & Voltron Paladins
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	Lifeguard on Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Vague ideas for Lance’s extended family are included.
> 
> If there are any tags you think I should add, let me know.

Shiro- Salvage

It was supposed to be an easy mission, investigating an alien dam that was supplying stuff to the Galra.

Only, it turned into a ‘everything explodes and collapses’ type mission when Keith got into a fight with one of the scientists who had willingly joined the Galra.

And Shiro was pinned to a floating platform on his way to back up Keith, when he got covered with debris when something exploded.

Shiro didn’t realize the platform he was trapped on had gone under until the water closed over his head.

“Shiro!” Keith yells, then yelps.

“I’ve got him, Hunk get Keith!” Lance yells.

“No- Lance, don’t!” Shiro can’t get loose, but they can’t afford to have more Paladins down. “I’m too far down-“ it’s dark, how deep does water have to be before you can’t see? Shiro doesn’t know the answer, nor does he actually want to.

“Hey, Handsome, come here often?” Lance is already in front of him and Shiro is surprised.

“How-?” Shiro blinks.

“HUD has a suit tracker. Also, lights and jet packs.” Lance grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you. I’ve done lots of dives- half my family makes a career on or in the ocean. I ever tell you about my Prima Alice? We adopted her after my biological cousin, who she was dating, died.” Lance explains, studying how Shiro is trapped. “She’s a marine biologist and best part of the summer for like five or six summers was when she brought me along to dive with the sharks she was researching.” Lance grins. “She and my Primo Tiago, who’s an underwater welder, got me certified and everything. I took every diving class I could.” Lance moves the metal, using his jet pack for extra power. “Included what to do if things go wrong- at least this isn’t a cave, because that would suck. Also, we need to talk about the lack of buddy system we’ve got- five does not divide by two.” Lance suddenly paused. Eyes tracking something. “Can you move your arms now?”

“Yes.” Just barely. 

“Good. Need you to cut here.” Lance grinned as Shiro obliged. “Man, lightyears from home and I still can’t use power tools underwater. Tiago will never let me live it down.” Lance cleared another section. Shiro felt his right leg be freed and his attempt to sit up was stopped by Lance, who unwrapped wire that Shiro hadn’t realized was there. “Don’t tell him, please?”

“Lance, what are you looking at?”Shiro asked as Lance directed him to cut a couple more beams, eyes glancing off to the side.

“... So, remember how I mentioned Prima Alice? We did some night dives. Lots of things in dark water are attracted to light. And Blue read life forms in the water.” Lance frees Shiro’s left leg and pulls him up.

“When were you going to tell me?” Shiro asks.

“When you were free so you couldn’t do something stupid like try to order me away. Let’s go before something that can eat us shows up.” Something brushed by Lance, then vanished into the dark.

“Lance-!”

“It’s okay, it was just checking me out. Start swimming, use your jets.” Lance tugged him. “We do not need to start a feeding frenzy. Then we won’t get out of here.”

Shiro followed Lance up, whatever it was brushed against Lance twice more before the water lightened, and it apparently lost interest.

Or it was scared off by Blue, who was waiting for them right where the water started to brighten. Lance tugged Shiro in.

“Blue’s got like a pressure regulator so we can fly, Prima Alice would kill for tech like that.” Lance commented and Shiro nods, surprised to see Lance confident without the bravado.

“Talking about Prima Alice?” Hunk asked over the comms.

“Who?” Keith asks, and Shiro’s relieved he’s okay.

“Lance’s favorite cousin. She took him diving with sharks and that should tell you everything you need to know.” Hunk sighed.

“You’re leaving out the part where she apparently did so at night.” Shiro adds, smiling as he hears Hunk freak out.

“Your mother let you do that?!” 

“Hunk, sharks are not blood thirsty monsters. They’re sweethearts.”

“Who are known to eat people!”

“Not nearly as much as people think!” Lance rolled his eyes. “I knew I should have forced you to watch Shark week. Hippos are more dangerous than sharks!”

“Hey, Hippos are cool!” Keith defends.

“Yes, and it doesn’t change that they are territorial and known to capsize boats.” Lance continued the argument with Keith and Hunk as Blue took off.

“Why someone with lifeguard training thinks sharks are sweet, I’ll never know.” Hunk grumbled, and Shiro paused.

“Lifeguard training?” Shiro asked looking at Lance who flushed.

“Yeah- equal parts summer job and looking after the younger members of my family.” Lance explained. “Mama insisted on classes for if things went wrong while I was watching them.”

Suddenly, quite a few things made sense about his rescue.

It wasn’t Garrison accurate, but Lance had done his best to keep Shiro calm and focused instead of panicking.

“Guess you’re going to be the designated lifeguard then.” Shiro hadn’t really thought about water rescues in space, but Lance having that training would be helpful.

* * *

Keith, Feeding Frenzy

In general, not hurting locals was a good thing. 

Keith very much wanted to disagree, seeing how these locals had knocked him out, tied him up, and then tossed him into a sea that had alien sharks and other predators.

They had answered a distress signal from a water planet. Despite the water, the people were island based. Hunk was oddly disappointed with whatever government system they had. (“It’s like Space Greece,” Hunk had explained, rather poorly in Keith’s opinion, “I was kinda hoping it would be more like my home...”)

And it turned out that these people had the bright idea that if they fed a Galra to the alien sharks, the sharks would eat Galra and not them.

And since Keith had accidentally activated a crashed Galra ship, the locals decided that he would work just as well as a full Galra, despite everyone else’s arguments to the contrary.

“Keith! Don’t thrash around too much, try to not get eaten, but whatever you do don’t draw blood!” Lance yelled over the comm and Shiro’s panic. “I’m coming to get you!”

“Got it.” Keith acknowledged, trying to get free. 

He managed to get his bayard out just as one of the alien sharks came at him with an open mouth. Keith stabbed it and suddenly the circling sharks went from swimming around to attacking each other.

“Damnit Keith, I said don’t draw blood!” Lance yelled over the comm., a split second later, Lance was next to him. Lance was muttering something as he stunned the sharks that got too close.

Something clamped around Keith’s leg.

“Lance!” Keith dropped his bayard.

A quick stun to the creatures head, and Keith yelped as Lance yanked him down into deeper water, recovering Keith’s bayard on the way.

The creatures didn’t notice, too intent on tearing at each other to care as Lance dragged him under a rocky ledge.

The feeding frenzy above them continued and Lance didn’t immediately untie him.

“Lance?”

“Relax. It’s starting to disperse.” Lance was checking his leg, before doing a quick field physical. “Armor’s scratched, but it wasn’t too bad. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just sore and have a headache.” Keith watched as the shark like creatures did disperse, vanishing into the surrounding water. “Can you untie me now?” Keith asked.

“Only if you promise to listen to me while we’re in water- Don’t stab anymore animals.” Lance is actually angry at him, and Keith blinks.

“They were attacking me.”

“No, they were checking you out.”

“Their mouths were open!”

“They don’t have hands, Keith!” Lance looked annoyed. “They’re like two year olds, in order to figure out what something is, they need to put it in their mouths! All you had to do was hit them when they got too close and not draw blood.” Lance stared at him. 

“What?”

“I just untied you, we need to move.” Lance looked unimpressed.

“I knew that.” Keith scrambled up. “... Thanks for the rescue.” He added after a moment.

“No problem.” Lance shot him a smile and Keith blinked when there wasn’t any gloating. “Blue got scans of these sharks and you would not believe how similar they are to earth sharks! They even have lateral lines and the ampullae of lorinzini that earth sharks do! They’re like, proof of Sharks perfection.”

“They just tried to eat us.” Keith is honestly bewildered.

“So? They’re still awesome!” Lance grins, and Keith finds himself pulled in by Lance’s excitement.

* * *

Pidge, Whitewater

Pidge was going to start hating nature again. Especially the alien wildlife that stampeded and caused her to get knocked into a river. 

She yelped as the current swept her downstream. Her jet pack wasn’t working and she couldn’t fight the current.

Pidge didn’t see the rock that hit her, but she did see Lance swimming towards her.

She might’ve passed out for a moment, because Lance went from swimming towards her to holding her.

Only, they were still going down river. 

“Lance, what?”

Why was Lance pushing them down river? 

“Hang on, and don’t drown me.” Lance ordered. And he pulls her so they’re going feet first down the river. 

The rocks are getting harder to dodge, and Lance seems to be barely avoiding slamming her into them. 

He’s also maneuvering oddly, and Pidge can’t really think of why he’s swimming so awkwardly ... until suddenly they’re not shooting down the current and he’s dragging her out of the water and collapsing next to her, his feet still in the water.

Pidge can’t really move, and if it wasn’t for everything on her aching, she’d be terrified that she was paralyzed. 

“Were you trying to smash me against rocks?!” Pidge demands once she gets her breath back, she still can’t move, but she has questions.

“You know the worst part of lifeguard training?” Lance asks and continues without waiting for an answer. “It’s training for the really bad worst case scenarios, things even the instructors might not have had to do. If you’re saving a person and there’s a current slamming you into rocks, you have to let the person you’re saving take the hit so you can be able to swim and get both of you to safety.” Lance looks absolutely miserable as he talks.

Pidge blinks. That’s logical, cold but completely logical, and she’s kinda surprised Lance ‘push people out of danger’ McLain was willing to do so.

She studied him again and realized that no, Lance had been very unwilling and he was looking pretty ill and shaky.

“Thanks for the rescue, Lance. I’m never getting into water again.” Pidge informs him. “I’m also probably not going to be moving ever again, I feel like someone used me for a punching bag.”

“Tell me about it.” Lance chuckled. “Whitewater rafting without the raft ought to be an Olympic sport. You get silver cause I had to save you.”

“I’ll take it and retire from the sport immediately. I hate sports.” Pidge informed him with a tired laugh.

Black landed, Shiro running out to get them. Neither of them could really move- Lance tried, but collapsed, frightening Shiro and herself.

* * *

Hunk: Flood

Hunk had faced a lot of things in space. 

A magical flood by the Druid running experiments on the latest planet they were freeing was new. Allura had been trying to figure out how to reverse it ... and then the building they were researching started to flood. Allura was knocked out when the door she yanked open had let in a torrent of water. 

Hunk might have been knocked out as well, his head hurt and so did his back.

“Hunk, where are you?” Lance called, and Hunk remembered that he had been with Allura.

“Guys, Allura’s helmet has a crack in the glass part.” Hunk reported.

“Can you give her yours and you hold your breath?” Keith asked.

“Don’t remove your helmet!” Lance yelled. “Keith, shut up, you’re not helping.”

“Lance-“

“No. If Hunk loses his helmet mid transfer, we’re going to be rescuing two bodies. Heroism in water is stupid and dangerous. Everyone shut up and listen to me. Hunk, find fabric or something similar and wrap it around Allura’s helmet. Don’t move, we don’t need you getting lost or trapped. Shiro and I are coming after you, Shiro, I’m going to need your arm to cut through debris. Keith, Pidge, continue with the evacuation, Coran, start scanning for any foreign signatures in their area, I don’t want to be electrocuted by a Druid while underwater.”

There was a brief silence, mostly from shock.

“Right, let’s go with Lance’s plan, then.” Shiro broke it. “Lance, lead the way.”

“Right. Hunk, start talking tell me about your mission from the beginning, as much detail as possible.” Lance ordered, and Hunk nodded.

“Right, so we went in the eastern side door...” Hunk narrated, holding Allura close. He does manage to find a scrap of fabric to wrap around the cracked helmet. “What does the fabric have to do with water rescue or lifeguard training or whatever?” Hunk asked, breaking his narration of events.

“It’s from one of Primo Tiago’s crew, Marco. His dad had a heart attack while flying and fell unconscious and Marco was told to land in the water, and to wrap his dad’s head in a jacket. The idea being that it gives a longer time before one drowns.” Lance responded.

“Coran, remind me that the next team training is going to be about water rescue.” Shiro said over the comms. “While I’m glad we don’t have these happen often, I want all of us on the same page, just in case. Lance is teaching it.”

“You’re going to be insufferable.”

“I promise to wait to do so after the lesson.” Lance replied drily, moments later he and Shiro were swimming in. “Shiro get Allura, Hunk you stick with me.” 

“I can carry her.”

“Hunk, you’ve got a dent in your helmet. And you’re slurring your words.” Lance shook his head.

“Oh, sorry.” Hunk let Shiro take Allura.

“It’s fine, at least you’re not trying to kill me this time.”

“Why would Hunk try to kill you?”

“Oh, Planet Mer, Hunk got hypnotized and tried to kill me.” Lance explained. “Not fun.”

“Ah, yes, you were pretty hurt when we picked you up.” Coran remembered.

“What? You said you were fine!” Hunk demanded.

“I was! Just bruised.”

“It was fascinating to learn that even your bones can bruise!” Coran added.

“Coran, not helping! Hunk, we’re fine, we’re alive, we need to keep swimming.” Lance cajoled. 

Hunk followed Lance, but he couldn’t get the worry out of his head. “You didn’t say you got hurt!”

“I mentioned you were trying to kill me, it wasn’t like I hid that.” Lance informed him. “Technically not your fault anyway, what with the brainswishing thing.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.” Hunk informed him. “I didn’t... do you know how much force it takes to bruise bone?!” Hunk did. 

“Dude, the only reason I got hurt was because I wasn’t fighting you, I was trying to un-brainswish you. So technically, my own fault I got hurt. Not yours.” Lance frowned. “Hunk tilt your head.”

Hunk did so, and that’s when he felt water touch his chin.

“Hunk, did you loosen the helmet earlier?” Lance demanded.

“Uh, maybe?” Hunk began to panic. 

“We get out of this, Keith, we will have words.” Lance growled. “Coran, how do I fix this? Simple words.” 

“If the helmet hasn’t resealed itself yet, it’s damaged. You need to get out of there.” 

“Lance-“

“I’ve got Hunk, you get Allura out, she’s got less time.” Lance sighed. “Hunk, stick with me, and don’t stop breathing, holding your breath is not going to help right now.” 

Lance keeps talking, and Hunk follows.

They all survive, and Lance spends the night in Hunk’s room.

* * *

Allura- Grief

Lance takes a few Vargas with Coran and Pidge to set up something.

“We basically pulled videos off of Lance’s phone, backed them up on the castle’s servers.” Pidge explains when they’re all gathered together.

“We’re watching this first because I don’t actually trust any of you to listen to me if we started with the practice rescues.” Lance informed them. “So, what we have is a series of safety videos that my cousins and I made, the first one was for my cousin’s college project, the rest were done for the family and local dive shop. Coran, Allura, save the ‘but on Altea’ stories until later. We’re humans, so you’re learning how to save us, not a more durable Altean. You will kill us otherwise.”

“Understood.” Coran nodded.

The video had a brown haired woman with oddly spotted skin (“That’s Prima Alice. Those are freckles, Allura.”) and a man who sort of resembled Lance, but with darker hair and the start of a beard (“Primo Thiago.”)

Lance in the video is tiny and chattering in a language the current one calls Spanish as they set up.

“You’re Bilingual?” Pidge asked in surprise.

“Actually, I speak four languages. My family is multilingual.” Lance shrugged.

“What are they?”

“Spanish, English, Haitian Creole and some French- the last is mostly for the tourists we got, so I’m not perfectly fluent.” Lance gestured at them to pay attention as Prima Alice began to talk.

Allura isn’t paying attention to the instructions. She’s watching the child version of Lance act out the scenarios with Primo Thiago. There’s similarities between the child and the adult, Lance fidgets if he has to stay still for long periods, but he’s also listening intently when the two adults talk.

Even when the video gets sidetracked over Alice misspeaking, prompting Thiago and Lance to tease her for it, Lance is more helpful than disruptive. 

“Swim now!” Lance cheers, and the camera moves to a pool, where they demonstrate how to rescue someone drowning, as well as how to identify someone in distress.

“If you’re on a professional dive, don’t wave unless you’re signaling that you’re in distress and need help. Most drowning victims won’t be thrashing around, either.” Alice explained, and Allura’s a little disturbed at how easy the child version of Lance demonstrated by going limp, floating like those who they couldn’t save from the flood.

She’s not the only one, Hunk is twisting around to check on Lance, Lance just rubbed Hunk’s back, and the video goes onto how to use some orange flotation device to rescue struggling swimmers.

The next video starts and Lance groans.

“Sorry, Coran, can you move to the next video?”

“What’s happening?” Allura asks as still frames pile on top of each other.

‘¡Reunión Familiar!’ Scrawls across the screen, a date underneath that means nothing to Allura.

“Family reunion video- it got mixed in.”

“I want to see this!” Pidge perks up.

“After training, Pidge.” Lance looks oddly amused by the other’s interest.

Training goes well, Lance is a surprisingly good teacher, and Pidge insists on watching the family reunion. 

Allura’s curious too, she’s seen glimpses of Lance’s family before, they all have, but this was ... there were a lot of people.

Names were scrawled as people came on screen, it was mostly them saying what they were doing or looking forward to, intermixed with kids playing games and people entering the house.

Primo Thiago all but knocked the door off when he entered, grabbing people into hugs. Lance and a woman he labeled his sister came in, Hunk trailing behind.

“Lance invited me, I wish I had a warning.” Hunk reminisced. 

Primo Thiago grabbed Lance and Veronica in a hug, before grabbing Hunk in a hug before realizing something.

“I don’t know you- have we already kidnapped someone?” Thiago asked.

“What?”

“Occasionally certain cousins bring home people from the places we go out to eat. Awkward, but not actually kidnapping.” Veronica explained.

Other people come and go from the video, and Allura watches enviously at the family chaos.

Lance is cheerfully explaining who everyone is and Allura finds herself more and more curious as others speak, occasionally with languages that Lance doesn’t speak- in particular one old woman in a wheelchair who seems to sleep more than the other older women.

“Abuelita Carmen, she speaks Haitian Creole and a few other languages she didn’t pass down.” Lance shrugs. “She’s my great grandmother, she passed away a few days after this.”

Allura swears that the older woman looks straight at her for a moment as she speaks to the camera.

The conversation around her goes on, the mice hiding when a cat pounces at the camera unexpectedly. 

Altean gatherings were formal, what extended family she once had were long gone. This shouldn’t be making her miss her family.

“Your family is crazy.”

“Oh, it gets better- they adopt people at random.” Hunk informed them. “The people that they accidentally kidnap? Half of them have been adopted into the family. There’s no escape once they adopt you. I got adopted with a standing offer of ‘bring the rest of your family’.” 

Allura blinks as her vision gets blurry.

“Allura?” Lance asks softly.

“I’m fine.” No one else is paying attention to them as Hunk points out the ‘devil child’ of Lance’s cousins, who apparently kept stealing Hunk’s food.

“You don’t have to be. You’re all my family, too.” Lance promised. “The only label my family considers important is ‘family’, the rest is just confusing the issue. They’d love to meet you ... all of the team, too.” Lance very gently wraps her in a hug, the Mice joining in. “Though we should probably keep Coran and Pidge away from Thiago, I just know something will explode.” Lance adds after a moment, and Allura snorts because Thiago just exploded some beverage in his hand, a woman chasing him off screen with a shoe.

“I miss my family.” Allura admitted.

Lance hugged her tighter, like he was trying to keep her from slipping under the weight of her grief.

The Lance on screen is constantly hugging and leaning on family, the terrible flirting happens with other family members and they flirt back just as badly, and Allura realizes that Lance had probably been trying to treat them like that because his family thought nothing of hugs and flirting and horrible jokes about running away together.

Hunk joins the hug when he notices, and the others follow suit as on screen little kids are capturing everyone older than them and giving make-overs. Lance and Hunk on screen are roped into braiding hair and one of the little kids falls asleep on Hunk.

At one point the reunion moves to the beach and Lance finally gets his interview.

“Let’s see, gonna keep trying for fighter pilot, that way the Garrison will cover me getting my doctorate in Marine Biology. Just got to get fighter pilot first.” Lance explains with a grin.

“Wait, what?” Pidge almost shrieks.

Given she has gotten squished between Hunk and Shiro, it still comes out muffled.

“The Garrison covers cost for future schooling, Cargo pilot only covers up to getting your masters, Fighter pilot will cover a doctorate. I wanted to pay my own way.” Lance explains.

(Allura keeps playing the video. It’s technically not her family, but she misses being surrounded by family. She’s not the only one, she’s spotted Keith and Pidge watching it more than once.)

* * *

Lance- Lost at Sea

The biggest problem with the Lion Swap is that their lifeguard is no longer in the Lion suited for water rescues.

Shiro’s still recovering from his second captivity at the hands of the Galra, and so they answer a distress call with him remaining behind with Coran.

The battle is easy, until Lance and the Red Lion are shot down by a cannon no one saw until it was too late.

Red is the guardian of Fire and this planet is water- Red isn’t going to recover from hitting the water that hard, or with currents that strong.

Shiro immediately volunteers to go down with her in Blue Lion as Keith takes out his rage on the ships that remain.

Allura has never been inadequate in her life but she can’t find the Red Lion on her scanners, worse, she can’t stay still, the currents are constantly pushing her.

“The currents are too strong for Blue Lion!” 

“Don’t fight!” Pidge suddenly exclaims. “Remember when I was in that river? Lance said you never fight a current, you go with it and eventually you’ll find a weak spot to escape. Lance would’ve gone with the current!” Pidge sounds excited. “Calculating the currents now, factoring where Lance hit and the speed ... sending possible locations now!”

Allura pushes Blue Lion with the current as fast as she can, Shiro gripping the back of the seat.

“I still can’t get a response from Lance on the comms, guys, his helmet might be damaged.” Hunk reports. “Lance can hold his breath a long time, but he’s not a world record holder that can do it for eleven minutes, he can only hold for three at most!”

Blue Lion roars and Red Lion comes into view collapsed on the bottom of the sea. Sparks flickering in the water, but Red Lion’s eyes are dark.

Something big passes by, bumping into Red.

“Get me as close as you can, I’ll get into Red and get Lance out.” Shiro’s hand briefly glows.

“We’re both going. We stick together underwater.” Allura corrects.

It takes a combination of her strength and Shiro’s arm to get into the mostly flooded cockpit. Lance was floating, but unconscious.

Allura immediately had to correct that. Lance’s eyes were slightly open, and he was tracking them, he’d been staying in the air pocket as much as he could.

“Lance, can you hear me?” Shiro gently pulled Lance into his arms. “I know I’m messing this up, but think you can get into Blue?”

“With a damaged helmet, he won’t survive the pressure, and we can’t get Red out right now.” Keith pointed out.

“I’ll give him mine.” Allura didn’t know why Lance wasn’t talking, but it was starting to worry her. The others immediately protested. “My shapeshiifting will be able to handle the pressure momentarily, I’m not human, so I’ll survive.”

“Lance was right. We need backup helmets in the lions.” Keith muttered.

“Lance!” Shiro called suddenly. 

Lance’s eyes had closed, and Allura yanked off her helmet, almost dropping it in her haste. Lance’s shattered helmet was left ignored.

Allura shifted into a form similar to Blaytz species, taking hold of Lance as they swam back to Blue.

Something curious tried to bump into her, and Shiro sent it away with a tap on the nose with his glowing arm.

Lance is in the pod for a while, Hunk and Yellow Lion aid Allura and Blue Lion in rescuing Red Lion.

They all gather together while they wait for Lance to get out of the pod.

“I was right.” Pidge announces, surprising them all. “I was going over the stuff from Red Lion- Lance didn’t fight the current, looks like he couldn’t get Red to fly so the best he could do was bury her in the sea floor, try and keep water from getting in. He was pretty concussed, though.” Pidge rubbed her eyes. “If he hadn’t...”

“We wouldn’t have found him in time.” Shiro grimaced. “He bought us time to get to him, but just barely enough.”

“We really need to work on a better buddy system with the Lions and Castle.” Keith has his hands on the glass of the pod, he seemed to hate having anyone actually in them. “I’m not going to be the one to tell his family he died because I didn’t watch his back.”

That would be... horrible. Lance’s family was large and very close knit. 

“They might already think he’s dead ... the Garrison... we have no idea what they told them after we left.” Hunk pointed out.

“Oh fuck no. I’m not letting them do that to them!” Pidge sits up. “Or Hunk’s family, or my mother! I am finding a way to send a message to earth, the bastards don’t get to hurt our families while we’re gone!”

“Language, but I have to agree.” Shiro glanced at Lance. “I should have found a way before for a message to get back to earth.”

“There’s usually an earth store at the swap moon, maybe they have a way to get to earth without the empire knowing?”

“And without getting caught by the Garrison.” Shiro grimaced. “We all know the stories about supposedly crash landed aliens getting dissected. Given what they did to me when I got back ... we have to assume there’s some truth to those stories now.”

“Ah, Altean diplomats had that problem too, not every planet enjoys strangers.” Coran acknowledged.

“This is going to be a mess.” Hunk groaned.

Keith yelped as he caught Lance.

“What’s a mess?” Lance asked. “What happened?”

Lance only got the answer after he was smothered in a group hug.

**Author's Note:**

> Marine Biologist Lance is going to be a head canon I use for another one shot inspired by Keith’s section.
> 
> I feel like there was a lot of stuff in the first couple seasons they just tossed to side and never used again ... so tempted to try a rewrite, but I want to finish my avatar last airbender and miraculous/dc fics first.
> 
> Guys, seriously, if you’re in water, your goal is not to die. If you are trained and know how to save someone else, go for it, but otherwise, focus on saving yourself, just don’t drown someone in the process.
> 
> Also, don’t stab anything while in the water, bad things happen. Most things don’t want to eat something that can fight back, but the safest thing is for you to get out of the water when sharks show up.


End file.
